ABSTRACT
There is a strong correlation between the presence of Nietzsche in the life of Israel Eldad (Scheib) and his adoption of Nietzsche for the Israeli Messianic radical right. Although Eldad is known, in the Israeli Nietzschean context, first and foremost for his splendid achievement in translating Nietzsche into Hebrew, I wish to show how he adopted intellectual and stylistic elements of the Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie suited to his view of the world and his radical ideology, the way in which the voluntaristic currents of philosophy shaped his conceptual and political outlook, and the place they had in his espousal of the voluntaristic-Messianic current in Zionism and Judaism. Three biographical elements are interwoven in the life and thought of Eldad:
his position in the leadership of Lehi (acronym of “Lohamei Herut Israel,” Fighters for Israel’s Freedom, known in English as the Stern Group), his national-existentialist outlook, and his translation of Nietzsche into Hebrew.1
This interrelationship between his biography and philosophy is paralleled by what he wrote about Nietzsche in his introduction to Beyond Good and Evil, the first book of Nietzsche’s he translated:
